January 1, 1981 (Thursday)
- Georgia defeated Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, 17-10, to finish the 1980 college football season with a 12-0-0 record and the mythical national championship.
- Greece joined the "Common Market" (European Economic Community), now the European Union.
- The Republic of Palau was proclaimed in the Palau Islands of Micronesia. Under an agreement signed with the United States in 1980, the new nation would continue to be administered as a United States trust territory, with the U.S. handling Palau's foreign and military affairs.
- The United States minimum wage increased from $3.10 to $3.35 per hour, where it would remain until 1990, when it went to $3.85.
- Léopold Sédar Senghor, President of Senegal since the nation became independent in 1960, became the first African president to retire voluntarily, resigning in favor of his protégé, Vice-President Abdou Diouf.
- Born: Mladen Petrić, Croatian soccer player, in Brčko, Yugoslavia; and Eden Riegel, American TV actress (All My Children), in Washington, D.C.
- Died: Mauri Rose, 74, American Indianapolis 500 driver, winner 1941, 1947, 1948
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Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)